Sep 2014 *
Yes I know, forget about the ridiculous title, here we have a new Australian chiller. Now I'm as a proud as any whenever Australia actually delivers a decent horror movie. I personally prefer the serial killers storyline, but unfortunately this is not that. No serial killers, no cannibals or torture. This is about a children's novel that comes to life. Sounds promising? It is. Does it deliver? Well....
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oBnmPGyU7u0/UuflF5Z_KDI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/jo0-l-E0Vac/s1600/Babadookbook.bmp
So the plot is about Amelia, played by Essie Davis. Suffering from depressing after her husband passed away, she's alone in raising her very active child Samuel. Samuel is a rather needy kid who still see's monsters under his bed and needs to sleep with his mum every night. One night while reading to Samuel, Amelia comes across a book she's never seen before, The Babadook, a story about a horrifying monster. As you might guess, the Babadook becomes a reality for Amelia and Samuel, and they have to fight against it, or die in its grasp.
So, is this movie any good? From a technical standpoint, this movie is beautiful. Very well made, very well acted (by Davis), great productions, all that kinda stuff. This movie looks really good. But, and this is a big but, the movie falls short in a couple of areas. Firstly, the build up to seeing the Babadook. It goes on for a while. I'm not necessarily an impatient person, but the whole first half of this movie is incredibly repetitive. We see this woman is sad, we see she is sleep deprived, everyone around her is being unreasonable, her son is annoying and keeps talking about the Babadook, and repeat. This is the whole first half of the movie. I understand the writers are trying to get us to sympathise with our lead actress, but you only have to watch her for five minutes to want to give her a hug. Dragging it out for half the movie wasn't necessary, if anything it made me bored and really annoyed at her tantrum throwing kid. Seriously, this kid started randomly screaming in a car, and I thought my head was going to explode. So ANNOYING!
https://static.squarespace.com/static/51b3dc8ee4b051b96ceb10de/t/53ed13e6e4b0378e0b61cc34/1408046140690/nightmarish-new-trailer-for-the-babadook
Of course the second half is very different. By this point, Amelia has seen the Babadook and it's slowly affecting her sanity. This is when I started to really enjoy the movie. At this point, I wasn't even sure if the movie really was a supernatural flick, or just a metaphor for descending into madness, like Blackswan or Repulsion. I knew if the show went in this direction, I would adore this flick. There is even a nod to the movie Repulsion as Amelia sees glimpses of it while flicking through the channels.
At this point, things are tense and the movie feels like it's heading in a real depressing and dark ending. But the ending, oh it's such a missed opportunity. It's hard to explain why without giving away spoilers, but lets just say it's a cop out. If it really was taking the Repulsion route, the ending really wasn't realistic, at least in my opinion. And if it really was supernatural, well then it's just really fucking stupid. Not to mention pointless as there is absolutely NO motivation why the Babadook is even attacking her. It just randomly appears. Not very good storytelling.
All that said and done, this movie was pretty effective in being kinda scary. The Babadook was pretty freaky. Very good move keeping him in the shadows. Hell it almost made the slow build up at the beginning worth it. Almost.
There is one more thing I should say. If you're gonna watch this movie, watch it for Essie Davis. Her performance made the movie for me. Everyone else around her annoyed the hell out of me, but her performance was pretty emotional. But everyone else sucked, pretty much. Why everyone was so cold to this lady I'll never understand, it was obvious from the first five minutes that this chick needed help. Someone cut her some slack!
All in all, the movie wasn't bad, yeah it has a lot of flaws, but it was still a pretty damn entertaining movie, and freaky to boot. Not bad for something out of Oz. But a shame it ended as it did. For those of you who like supernatural flicks, or like that slow descent into madness theme, definitely check it out, you'll probably very much enjoy it. While I can't deny it's a very decent effort, it just falls short of the mark for me.
6/10
Thanks for reading. Thoughts/opinions?
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oBnmPGyU7u0/UuflF5Z_KDI/AAAAAAAAE6Q/jo0-l-E0Vac/s1600/Babadookbook.bmp
So the plot is about Amelia, played by Essie Davis. Suffering from depressing after her husband passed away, she's alone in raising her very active child Samuel. Samuel is a rather needy kid who still see's monsters under his bed and needs to sleep with his mum every night. One night while reading to Samuel, Amelia comes across a book she's never seen before, The Babadook, a story about a horrifying monster. As you might guess, the Babadook becomes a reality for Amelia and Samuel, and they have to fight against it, or die in its grasp.
So, is this movie any good? From a technical standpoint, this movie is beautiful. Very well made, very well acted (by Davis), great productions, all that kinda stuff. This movie looks really good. But, and this is a big but, the movie falls short in a couple of areas. Firstly, the build up to seeing the Babadook. It goes on for a while. I'm not necessarily an impatient person, but the whole first half of this movie is incredibly repetitive. We see this woman is sad, we see she is sleep deprived, everyone around her is being unreasonable, her son is annoying and keeps talking about the Babadook, and repeat. This is the whole first half of the movie. I understand the writers are trying to get us to sympathise with our lead actress, but you only have to watch her for five minutes to want to give her a hug. Dragging it out for half the movie wasn't necessary, if anything it made me bored and really annoyed at her tantrum throwing kid. Seriously, this kid started randomly screaming in a car, and I thought my head was going to explode. So ANNOYING!
https://static.squarespace.com/static/51b3dc8ee4b051b96ceb10de/t/53ed13e6e4b0378e0b61cc34/1408046140690/nightmarish-new-trailer-for-the-babadook
Of course the second half is very different. By this point, Amelia has seen the Babadook and it's slowly affecting her sanity. This is when I started to really enjoy the movie. At this point, I wasn't even sure if the movie really was a supernatural flick, or just a metaphor for descending into madness, like Blackswan or Repulsion. I knew if the show went in this direction, I would adore this flick. There is even a nod to the movie Repulsion as Amelia sees glimpses of it while flicking through the channels.
At this point, things are tense and the movie feels like it's heading in a real depressing and dark ending. But the ending, oh it's such a missed opportunity. It's hard to explain why without giving away spoilers, but lets just say it's a cop out. If it really was taking the Repulsion route, the ending really wasn't realistic, at least in my opinion. And if it really was supernatural, well then it's just really fucking stupid. Not to mention pointless as there is absolutely NO motivation why the Babadook is even attacking her. It just randomly appears. Not very good storytelling.
All that said and done, this movie was pretty effective in being kinda scary. The Babadook was pretty freaky. Very good move keeping him in the shadows. Hell it almost made the slow build up at the beginning worth it. Almost.
There is one more thing I should say. If you're gonna watch this movie, watch it for Essie Davis. Her performance made the movie for me. Everyone else around her annoyed the hell out of me, but her performance was pretty emotional. But everyone else sucked, pretty much. Why everyone was so cold to this lady I'll never understand, it was obvious from the first five minutes that this chick needed help. Someone cut her some slack!
All in all, the movie wasn't bad, yeah it has a lot of flaws, but it was still a pretty damn entertaining movie, and freaky to boot. Not bad for something out of Oz. But a shame it ended as it did. For those of you who like supernatural flicks, or like that slow descent into madness theme, definitely check it out, you'll probably very much enjoy it. While I can't deny it's a very decent effort, it just falls short of the mark for me.
6/10
Thanks for reading. Thoughts/opinions?
It's a slow burner, and our lead actress (who indeed does a damn good job) is slowly losing her shit because of her obnoxious son. The movie feels like Repulsion and the Exorcist had a baby, and that baby is always kept in the shadows. The Babadook itself is pretty creepy, but not up close. It's creepiness stems from it being so goddamn mysterious. You're looking hard throughout this movie to catch a good look at it, but you never will, and that was handled very well.
The ending doesn't really bug me as it did you. As I read a quick analysis of the ending on imdb, it's suggesting that